One of the challenges Google has had is the ability to verify content as high quality content. Many marketers and SEO agencies spent years spinning content into hundreds and thousands of versions and posting it to multiple websites all with links back to the main website. This helped the websites achieve top rankings in Google because at that time, the algorithm based a high quality website by how many links that site had.
Google has been trying to figure out a way to provide better search results for the end user. Their search engine is their primary product and it is in their best interest to give the best results possible. They then hired a team of Search Quality Raters to manually review the search results and provide data about the results. This was a step in the right direction, but not a long term solution!
When Google launched Google+ it seemed to the world that it was an attempt to compete with the social media powerhouses of Facebook and Twitter. Maybe it was. Today Google+ is much more than that. And those that have delayed jumping in and have been slow to adapt to another social network… now is the time.
Google+ has many benefits but the one I want to talk about today is how to use it to verify authorship of your guest blog posts. Google wants to know what content you have written. They want to know what content they can safely mark as “high quality” and show in the search results.
The path to verify your guest blog posts is quite straightforward. In essence, it is a reciprocal link from your Google+ profile to your guest blog post.
The reason why you would want to verify your content is two-fold. First, Google has stated that they will give preferential treatment to content that is verified. Second, the search listings of verified content have a special bonus. They have a picture of the person who wrote the content. This little picture should increase the click through rate of your listing.
Looking at that listing, what listing are your eyes drawn to? Yep! The one with the picture. In theory, if all other things are equal, the user would click on the listing with the picture, making the click through rate of your organic search listing improve.
So how do we verify authorship of our guest blog posts and get that little picture next to our post?
Step One: Link to your Google+ profile from your guest blog post.
In your author bio you can normally put in 2-3 links to your websites. It is not yet the norm, but will be soon, for sites to request the Google+ link also. Simply put a text link with your name and link it to your Google+ profile with the ?REL=AUTHOR at the end.
Step Two: Link From Your Google+ contributor section to your guest blog post.
You can add as many websites as you need to and you can also change the visibility so they don’t all have to show up on your profile if you don’t want them to.
And that is it!
Nicole Munoz is the CEO of http://www.StartRankingNow.com. Since 2010 Nicole has helped over 150 clients market their businesses online and has spoken at over 36 live events attended by more than 41,000 people. She has recently published a series of 10 books and DVDs on Amazon called 7 Figure Marketing Blueprint. To discover more about SEO and Content Marketing, sign up for a webinar with Nicole at http://webinars.nicolemunoz.com.